JetBlue’s Founder Says a Brazilian Buyout Isn’t In the Cards

The founder of low-cost JetBlue Airways Corp. on Friday denied any plans to purchase the U.S. airline or the Portuguese national carrier, TAP Air Portugal, and said a report in a Brazilian newspaper was wrong.

On Friday, Brazilian newspaper Folha de S. Paulo reported that David Neeleman was putting together a $3.2 billion investment fund to purchase both JetBlue and TAP, with an eye to eventually merging the two with his Brazilian start-up airline, Azul Linhas Aereas, which is being prepared for an initial public offering of shares.

The report said the Brazilian government would contribute to the fund via the National Bank for Economic and Social Development. The report said BNDES, as the bank is known, would contributed $600 million for a 20% stake in the fund.

Mr. Neeleman, who stepped down as chairman of JetBlue in 2008 to start Azul, said the report was wrong, and that he’s never discussed the possibility of purchasing JetBlue with the Brazilian government.

“My focus is 100% on taking Azul public,” Mr. Neeleman said in an interview.

The executive confirmed that plans to take the Brazilian airline public have been postponed, and that the deal can wait until currency markets have stabilized. He said the recent depreciation of the Brazilian real had gone too far and he expected the market to “calm down.” Meantime, Azul has plenty of capital, he added.